‘The Odyssey’ Already Outsold ‘Oppenheimer’ More Than Twice Over in Presales

Christopher Nolan occupies a rare space in contemporary cinema. He is one of the few filmmakers whose name alone can transform a summer release into a cultural event, drawing audiences who might otherwise stream at home to line up, travel across state lines, and camp out in virtual queues for hours.

That reputation has been building for decades, from ‘The Dark Knight’ through ‘Inception’, ‘Interstellar’, and beyond. With his latest film, ‘The Odyssey’, all of that built-up devotion is now colliding with a single, stunning set of numbers.

When Premium Large Format tickets for ‘The Odyssey’ went on sale on June 4, covering IMAX and other PLF screenings, the rush was immediate and overwhelming. Within 30 minutes, the AMC app had paused ticket sales entirely. Fandango’s site slowed to a crawl. Regal experienced similar disruptions. Wait times on AMC hit one hour for customers who managed to get into the queue at all, rather than being sent to a holding screen.

The chaos was striking enough on its own, but a comparison circulating online has sharpened the scale of the demand into something genuinely jaw-dropping. According to tracking data shared by industry analyst @Itsjat32 on X, ‘The Odyssey’ has already sold 150,000 tickets in initial domestic presales for opening weekend. For context, that figure more than doubles the roughly 65,000 tickets that ‘Oppenheimer’ had moved at a comparable stage of its presale cycle.

‘The Odyssey’ delivered the strongest opening-day ticket presale performance for a major studio release at AMC since 2022. Even more striking, only PLF screenings were available during that initial rollout, meaning standard showtimes had not yet gone on sale at all, yet the film still outpaced the entire first-day presale totals of any major theatrical release at AMC across all formats since that year.

AMC CEO Adam Aron took to social media to acknowledge the chaotic rollout, apologizing for the long queues while confirming the record-breaking result. In a narrow comparison, only music-related theatrical events from artists such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have managed to generate higher initial advance ticket sales exclusively at AMC. That is the company ‘The Odyssey’ is now keeping before a single mainstream showtime has even been listed.

There is a reason moviegoers trust Nolan, whose immersive films are offering something distinctive at a time when theaters are filled with superhero sequels and franchise fare. Part of what makes ‘The Odyssey’ so compelling as an event is the format itself. It is the first commercial feature film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras in 1570 format, a distinction that has pushed dedicated Nolan fans to treat securing a premium seat as something closer to a concert ticket than a typical moviegoing experience.

Despite the high demand to see ‘The Odyssey’ in PLF, the supply is limited since only 24 theaters in the United States are playing it in IMAX 70mm. The first ticket drop in July 2025 prompted resells on eBay for over $100. The recent June presale triggered a similar situation, with tickets resold for as high as $1,000.

‘Oppenheimer’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned approximately $952 million worldwide. It reinvigorated the argument, which Nolan has been making for 20 years with films from ‘Memento’ through ‘Tenet’, that theatrical cinema is irreplaceable and that the experience of seeing a large-format film in a well-maintained venue cannot be replicated at home. ‘The Odyssey’ is arriving as the direct heir to all of that goodwill.

In ‘The Odyssey’, Matt Damon plays Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who embarks on a perilous journey to return home after the Trojan War. The film carries a production budget of $250 million and boasts an A-list ensemble that includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, and Robert Pattinson. Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, and Benny Safdie round out a cast that reflects just how much talent Universal was able to attract to the project.

Current box office projections from Global Box Office place ‘The Odyssey’ in a $65 to $80 million opening weekend range, though those estimates were made before the presale chaos on June 4 and may shift considerably as standard showtime listings open to the general public later this summer. World of Reel

‘The Odyssey’ opens in theaters worldwide on July 17. If the presale numbers are any indication, the conversation around this film is only getting started.

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